Ghana: Hannah Adzo Klutsey

Hannah's parents are both illiterate but were determined that she and her three brothers should attend school. Five years later on,
Richard Sky finds that the family is struggling to find enough money for both food and education

Ghana: Hannah Adzo Klutsey

Hannah's parents are both illiterate but were determined that she and her three brothers should attend school. Five years later on,
Richard Sky finds that the family is struggling to find enough money for both food and education

Sunday 19 September 2010 17.00 EDT
First published on Sunday 19 September 2010 17.00 EDT

Hannah Klutsey ran from her family's single-room house with tears in her eyes. A mouthful of bread had lodged in her throat and her eyes were bloodshot and bulging.

"Mummy, water!" she shouted as she struggled to swallow. Her mother, Mary, dropped the bundle of firewood she had carried into the dusty compound and rushed to the huge plastic water pot in front of their ramshackle kitchen.

She came back with a plastic cup of water, which Hannah gulped down. Only later, when the youngster was recovering on her mother's knee, did they notice the mosquito larvae at the bottom of the cup: half a dozen wormlike creatures writhing in the water.

"The pot must have been left open for mosquitoes to lay eggs in the water," said Mary, whose immediate concern was that her only daughter, who had recently recovered from severe skin rashes, could fall ill again. "She survived her recent sickness by miracle: another illness could kill her," said Hannah's father, Benjamin, said as he emptied the contaminated water from the giant pot.

There is no running water in Kpobiman, the poverty-stricken community outside Accra in which Hannah and her family live. Like most of their neighbours, the Klutseys use water from a shallow borehole. Others are forced to draw water from stagnant pools, where germs and parasites are abundant.

"The water is so bad you can't imagine this community is just a stone's throw from the city," Jeleelah Quaye, the local assembly representative, said.

In the past year, more than 300 residents, both children and adults, have contracted buruli ulcer, a waterborne disease causing skin lesions and deformities. Four people have died, Quaye said.

In the five years since the Guardian first visited the Klutsey family, Hannah has grown into a beautiful five-year-old. Neighbours say she is a lively girl.

However, the family's living standards have not improved. They now have electricity, but still share a one-room hut. "This is not good for family life. How can we still be living in a single room with our children, some of whom are no longer kids, but adolescents?" Benjamin asks. They still have no sanitation, not even a pit latrine. Their staple diet is akple, a meal made from cassava and corn, which Mary also sells from a stand outside their home. "Meat is too expensive for us. We can't afford that luxury," she said.

At Christmas, they eat chicken and rice, but sometimes lunch is just a piece of bread. To supplement their diet, local children hunt rats. On the day the Guardian visited, thick black smoke billowed from nearby bushes where a dozen children had set fires to force the animals from their holes. One of the boys was Samuel, Hannah's 10-year-old brother. "It's good meat," he said, pulling the skin from a dead rat.

Hannah's eldest brother, 15-year-old Alfred, is already working, although he has not finished school. He proudly shows off the Manchester United jersey he bought with money earned on building sites.

But his spending is a source of irritation for Mary, who reminds Alfred that school term is about to start but the family do not have enough money to pay his outstanding exam fees. "That's my immediate headache," she said.

Mary hopes she "will one day own a big convenience shop", a business she thinks will help transform her family's economic situation. Her husband, on the other hand, wants the government to support his farm with subsidised fertilisers and farming implements.

"The crops are not doing well, because the rains have not been regular this season," he said as he dug up a cassava root. "This will do for dinner," he said. "We thank God we have something to eat today ... tomorrow will take care of itself."

David was born in the rundown Mama Yeyo hospital and spent the first five weeks of his life there – not because he was ill but because his parents could not afford to pay a £255 bill for the caesarean delivery. Katrina Manson reports on his life since then